Health and safety issues along with finding ways to reduce costs of labor and food are ongoing efforts for every restaurant across the world. One area that always has high safety and cost concerns in any restaurant that fries food is a fryer. Much has been done to automate the handling and methodologies of getting used cooking oil from the fryer into a sealed storage bin, but there are few options available to automate and enhance the handling of fresh cooking oil.
Previous methodologies teach how to automate the handling of fresh cooking oil, but only in bulk. This option is limited by equipment, oil selection, geographical reach of the bulk oil company and associated inventions to dispense it. Accordingly, the standard for most restaurants is using 35 lb. boxes of oil. This allows every restaurant to select the exact oil specification it requires and have it delivered with normal distribution.
However, the safety issues and waste with boxed oil are numerous in a restaurant. For example, when a fryer becomes low on oil, a full box of oil or multiple boxes must be obtained from a back storage area, carried to the frying station, opened and gently poured into a fryer with 400 F. hot oil already in it. Not only is there a concern with carrying and slipping with a 35 lb. box of oil but the potential for a burn accident is very probable. Further, filling a fryer requires opening the cap, picking up the box, and gently pouring the container into the fryer. It is an awkward operation and causes oil to splatter whether the fryer is hot or cold. In addition, since there is a plastic container holding the oil, the amount of oil residue can be very high because a typical worker does not want to stand over the fryer, waiting for the oil residue to trickle down the sides of the container and completely emptying it out. On average every box of oil used in a restaurant has at least 1 lb. of oil left in the container as residue. Accordingly, an automated system for dispensing fresh cooking oil would give a user numerous safety and cost savings.